I just added a (perhaps temporary) feature to the sidebar of the blog called “That’s What’s Up.” It’s primarily for my friends and family so they can know where I am or what I am up to if they want to meet up. I am interested in experimenting with ways that a blog can drive real world traffic. So, until I get bored with it, or I decide I don’t want to broadcast my whereabouts, I will be updating this section.

That’s What’s Up is powered by Twitter and Alex King’s Twitter Tools. Thanks Alex.

Update: Yikes. I need to make my wordpress editor a bit longer. I deleted about two parapgraphs from the original post that I wrote (and thought I deleted) before figuring out what it was I was trying to say.

I just got around to reading Jonathan Lethem’s truly inspired piece entitled The Ecstasy of Influence in the February Issue of Harpers Magazine. The piece explores plagiarism and influence in art. It is a must read. I really like what Lethem is doing with his own art. He isn’t merely philosophizing on copyright, he is walking the walk. Check out his Promiscuous Materials project where he has given non-exclusive rights to various stories and music lyrics for a dollar. He also recently decided to give a free option to the film rights for his latest book You don’t love me yet to one lucky filmaker.

Rob Harvilla has a hilarious article entitled Hot Hot Heat -
A graphical dissertation on the number one song in America in the village voice about the breakout hit “This is Why I’m Hot” by Mims.

An excerpt:

The most amazing line in “This Is Why I’m Hot”—and, even at this early a juncture, quite possibly the most amazing line of any song to see release in 2007—is “I’m hot ’cause I’m fly/You ain’t ’cause you not.” Brutal and unassailable in its simplicity. Consider the reasoning, first, of just “I’m hot ’cause I’m fly”:

Mims is hot because he’s fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one’s being fly? “You ain’t ’cause you not” would seem to clear that up:

It would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren’t at least one, you are neither.

(thanks to jono for the heads up)

If you’re not familiar, FT is the international business newspaper that looks like someone forgot to separate their whites on laundry day.

I love words or phrases that express feelings I have had or situations I have been in. I like that they can be reduced to something expressible. My latest discovery is the French saying, L’esprit de l’escalier which literally translated means “the wit of the staircase.”

According to World Wide Words:

It refers to that infuriating situation in which you leave a… room and are halfway down the stairs before you suddenly think of that devastatingly witty comment you could have made… More generally, it’s any sparkling remark you wish you had thought of at the time but were too slow-witted to produce.

I like that the French have a phrase for that feeling. Apparently the Germans do too, it’s called Treppenwitz

If you like this sort of thing, check out my earlier post on Lady Mondegreen and the Cupertino Effect.

Excerpt from a recent conversation with a friend over GoogleTalk within Gmail wherein he discovers GoogleTalk for the first time.

me: you busy?
friend: whoa! is this something recent? i’ve never seen this function before.
me: hahahahahaahahahaahah!

A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.

DAD: O.K.

GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.

DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.

UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.

DAD: We all are.

MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.

DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.

MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.

FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!

DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.

MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!

DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!

MOM: Now everything is fine.

DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.

MOM: There was a big sex.

FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!

(Everybody laughs.)

MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!

GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?

ALL: Yes.

GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.

“How College Kids Imagine the United States Government” and “A Day at UNICEF Headquarters, as I Imagined It in Third Grade” can been viewed at the New Yorker.

I lost about 45 minutes yesterday reading Randall Munroe’s comic strip xkcd. The subtitle to xkcd is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” And that is exactly what he deilvers. I can’t remember the last time a comic strip evoked actual feelings (ok… Boondocks and Sinfest aside). As simple as his strips are, Munroe is on to something here. Enjoy.

I have been playing around with my photoblog for over a year. I have tried various blogging platforms and plugins in search of an easy way to manage a photoblog. The quest was elusive and, as a result, I never really gave the photoblog the attention it deserved.

I finally got around to updating my photoblog to run on Wordpress (special thank you to YAFB - Yet Another Photo Blog). So what does this mean? A few things. Most importantly, it means that I will frequently update the photoblog. It also means that you can comment on individual photos (if you wish). Finally, for those of you reading along in your feed reader, the photoblog now his its own RSS Feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/mikeoliver-photography).

There are still some bugs (I can’t figure out the archive pages) and some ommissions (I need to add links back to the main blog and create a few pages), but its up and running and now the design matches the design employed at mikeoliver.org proper.

I hope you enjoy.

I opted for a chicken, roasted red pepper, and swiss wrap at lunch today in the office cafeteria. An hour later I was outside getting coffee and one of the two cooks was having a smoke. He saw me and said “how did you like your wrap? Was it ok?” I thought he was just a conscientous chef who took pride in his craft. I told him it was delicious and thanked him for the meal. As I entered the building the second cook, now in his civilian clothes, was exiting the elevator. He said, “hey, was everything ok with the wrap?”

Now I want to know what was wrong with my wrap?

As an aside, I noted today that all of the milk and cream in our refrigerators in the office say:

Use by March 25, if New York, March 20.

I want to know who in New York was responsible for getting a law passed that requires fresher dairy in New York than other states. Because there has to be a law (the alternative being that milk spoils faster in New York). There is some joke about the New York minute to made here but I am too under the weather to suss it out.

I’ll throw in a gratuitous link to Real Simple’s Surprising Expiration Dates (and you’ll note that they do not differentiate between New York and the rest of the United States).

Does any one else feel like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is pulling a Wee-Bey?

Wee-Bey

For those who haven’t seen The Wire, Wee-Bey is a member of the gang that finally gets caught and is arrested for murder. While at the station house he calmly cops to every murder that his gang has ever committed - every single one. He essentially tables every murder investigation the police were conducting against his gang.

Now that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is talking, he is copping to everything Al Qaeda has done in the last decade. Not only was he responsible for the 9/11 attacks from A to Z, but he also personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, all the while he was furiously spearheading over 30 other acts of terrorism. By his account, we can stop looking for everybody else cause he is the “terrorists.”

Khalid

I can see him in the interrogation room, like:

“Oh.. the USS Cole? Indeed. That was me. First World Trade Center Bombing? Why do you think I was responsible for 9-11 from A to Z? I drove the truck the first time and I always finish what I start. Jessica Lynch? (smiling) Fo’ sho’. I personally put the blindfold on that [redacted], the [redacted] is lucky she got out alive! And oh…. I killed Joan-Benet Ramsey.

To the gals or guys on the mobile team at Flickr (http://m.flickr.com):

Can I get a next link and (I know I am pushing it) a previous link under the picture on the individual picture pages? The page with several pictures has a “more” button to navigate to the next page of pictures, but the individual page doesn’t have any way (as far as I can tell) of navigating to the next picture in the photo stream. Since our screens are so small, the images can only be enjoyed on the individual picture pages. It would be nice to be able to simply click to the next image from there.

Thanks for all you do. If I haven’t said it before, I love you.

I read David Pogue’s article about GrandCentral in yesterday’s Times with skepticism. Their main premise: One phone number that will ring all of your phones. I don’t need that (at least I don’t think I do). However, I was pleasantly surprised by their robust feature set. One feature in particular answered a Product Prayer ™ of mine from last August.

Grand Central offers relationship based voicemail greetings!

Now you can greet mom or your boo with an “I love you” without having to greet everyone that way. You can share plans with a select group of friends without broadcasting where you are going. You can finally have a professional message for your perspective employer and a fun message for your friends without being inappropriate.

While I am not ready to give up my number just yet, I am glad to see someone offering such a valuable no-brainer service in the face of the telco unwilligness to provide truly useful features.

I love the word fathom and imagine oceans and understanding whenever I hear the word. But this older definition is pure gold. As established by an Act of Parliament, a fathom was:

The length of a man’s arms around the object of his affections.

You’ll note that I got this definition and the quote below from a very authoritative source:

“Fathom originally was a land-based measuring term. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word faetm, embracing arms or to embrace. Common measurements in the Middle Ages and earlier were based on the average size of parts of the body, such as the foot, the hand (still used for measuring horses) or the rod (the left foot, heel to toe, of forty pious men as they left church on a Sunday morning). A fathom was established by an act of Parliament, as “the length of a man’s arms around the object of his affections.” Fathom became a term used to describe the act of taking the measure of something. Thus, trying to fathom something is trying to figure it out.”

I came across a fun little easter egg on the OddCast website. See the little avatar on the upper left hand corner?

If you click on her she starts protesting:

“Stop it!”

“Keep your mouse to yourself”

The funny thing is, she sounds like she is really upset by the clicking. It actually sounds more authentic than the marketing messages she presents when you load the page.

After several more requests to stop, she gives a final warning and then is replaced with this much less attractive avatar who says in a Frankenstein voice “See what you’ve done. She was much more fun.”

Just in case you were wondering if I was an avatar molester, I was clicking on her because I thought perhaps the avatar presented different marketing messages on each page. When she didn’t say anything on the management team page I thought maybe I had to click her in order to hear the message.